Today we had Stage 1 of the Schools Appeal. There were 17 appeals, one no-show, one woman left in a strop after about 30 minutes. Remaining were evenly split – the silent over-awed half, and the vociferously state-our-case half (guess which we were in?). LEA woman was so unprepared I almost felt sorry for her (almost) – talk about woolly. She just kept repeating “well, I have spoken to the head, and he says there is no more room”.
But she didn’t know actual square metre-age of teaching space, changes that had been made to accommodate the high intake in previous years, the absenteeism rate… not even convinced she had actually visited the school. Two hours straight she was being interrogated by parents and panel.
The upshot was that despite the intake numbers being moved from 210 to 240 this year, the school COULD accommodate more – so we moved on to Stage 2. The personal appeal, where we have to convince the panel that it really is in no.1’s best interests to attend this particular school.
That’s on Wednesday.
